Chapter 288
Maybe it was the sore nerves from the crash, maybe the lingering shock, or maybe just the flat-out, stark reminder of how bad Darren had gotten that year and how he’d only just now started to really recover…but it struck home, like a knife in the heart, and suddenly Jayden just burst into tears.
“Oh Jesus. Hey, hey, no,” Darren murmured soothingly, and Jayden was being turned and pulled into a hug, firm but gentle in deference to his strapped shoulder and the lingering soreness in both of them. Darren smelled of shower gel and cooking now, and he was hot in that pulsating way he always was in bed, and Jayden clung to him and cried into his sleep shirt, great wracking sobs that tore through his chest until they were physically painful. “Ssh, come on, Jayden. It’s okay—I’m okay—and I never did it, did I? I’ve never had a crash before either, ‘cept if you count that silly cow who took my wing mirror off in the Asda car park last year. It’s all right. It was just a fleeting thing, I haven’t done it since, I swear to you.”
Jayden shook his head and just cried harder. It hurt. It hurt, that Darren had ever wanted to, that Jayden hadn’t been there then, that he’d let Darren get that bad, that…that he’d been so fucking stupidto think that Cambridge—or anything—was ever going to be more important than this, than this man talking to him and holding him and…
“It’s all right,” Darren said, a large hand briefly cupping the back of Jayden’s head before beginning to stroke his hair in a soothing, almost petting motion. “Come on, calm down. We’re okay, aren’t we? We’re here and we’re fine and we got through the bad spell, and if this stuff I’m popping every morning keeps working, we might be out the other side as much as we can be.”
“I was so fucking stupid,” Jayden croaked, and a sob hitched and turned into a choking cough. “I was so stupid.”
“You were like nineteen,” Darren said. “And you’ve easily been dumber before.”
“Like when?”
“Like the first time you made me bleed during sex and wanted to take me to hospital and wouldn’t so much as kiss me for like a week, even though I could barely feel it?”
“That’s different,” Jayden stammered and clung tighter. “I love you. I love you, I love you, and you…just…don’t leave me,” he begged. “Don’t…don’t ever. Ever.”
Darren made a soothing noise, and dropped both arms around Jayden’s waist, twisting them until Jayden was settled over his chest. Jayden dropped his head to listen to that steady, slow heartbeat—so slow, it had always been so slow, it had fascinated him when they were teenagers—and push his good arm up under the sleeping shirt to find the wash of heat and smooth expanses of Darren’s bare skin.
Slowly, he calmed, the tears gradually abating, and he wrapped his mind around where they were now. It was history. Darren was here, and Jayden could keep him okay here. The pregabalin was keeping him safe, for the minute. And it was working, because Darren was himself at the moment, even after a head injury and an accident, and…and he’d promised. Darren didn’t promise if he couldn’t keep it. He’d never promised not to kill himself, because they both knew when he was having an episode he was irrational. But he’d promised that he hadn’t done it since, hadn’t he? So he hadn’t
“I love you,” he repeated, and Darren shifted just enough to kiss the top of his head and stroke his little finger over the shell of Jayden’s ear, a tiny and comforting motion.
“Love you too,” he murmured.
Jayden was lulled under by the slow reality of Darren’s heart, contracting and easing steadily and carelessly inside that powerful chest, ignorant of everything else around it.
Alive.
* * * *
Jayden came home from work the next day feeling like he’d never gone. The girls had fussed over him and his sling (though he’d abandoned it at lunchtime to make them stop) especially when he admitted to having woken up early because Darren had sneaked out to go to his early shift at work and the absence of him, in the aftermath of last night, had been…jarring. Not upsetting, exactly, but not…nice either.
Still, he came home in good spirits. Darren had been sarcastic by text, and then had left work at two o’clock and had gone quiet, which meant he’d probably gone out for a while to the gym and so would be home all evening for Jayden to…
Well. For Jayden.
Darren’s car was in front of the garage when Jayden opened the gate, and when he opened the door, that low voice was singing gently somewhere at the back of the house, accompanied by soft piano music. Some floaty thing. But Jayden’s fingers felt grimy from a day of handling fresh print-outs and he dropped his bag in the hall and headed upstairs to the bathroom. Darren carried on singing, apparently oblivious, and as Jayden reached the top of the stairs, the piano stopped and the singing continued. He was puttering about doing chores, then, Jayden surmised.